• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• Northern Ireland: Prisons

Northern Ireland: Prisons

01 July 1991

The Committee for the Transfer of Irish Prisoners has launched a new pamphlet explaining the social, legal and political problems of getting Irish prisoners transferred from Britain to the North of Ireland. "Double Sentence" shows how since 1973 the British government has stood behind eight different reasons for refusing transfer. This issue has also been taken up by the Standing Advisory Committee on Human Rights which is currently considering a paper by lawyer Alana Jones on prisoners' rights to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The paper concludes that "restrictions on the availability of visits compassionate home leave and transfer to prisons nearer home, based solely on punitive grounds cannot be justified" (see also Irish News 18.4.91). For many years Belfast's Victorian Crumlin Road prison, used largely as a remand prison, has been the site of conflict (APRN feature 7.3.91). Recently, this has intensified as prisoners have resisted a policy of enforced Loyalist/Republican integration. In May it emerged that the Northern Ireland Office is considering a major £15 million refurbishment programme to bring the prison into line with the Woolf Report recommendation to end slopping out within five years (Irish News 21.5.91). Another recent indication of the problems at the prison was the four week hunger strike by Gerard Clarke which began when he was placed in isolation following his refusal of an attempt by the RUC to recruit him as an informer (Irish News 18.4.91).